


The Wall

by tiptoethrough



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 19:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8545825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoethrough/pseuds/tiptoethrough
Summary: “It is easy to go down into Hell...; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air-- there's the task." Jon Snow's resurrection.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this pretty much like.... years ago, not long after ADWD came out. This is actually just the opening, but I have finally acknowledged that I'm never going to finish it, so I've cut out the rest of the actual fic and just left this little piece as a standalone.

In the dark pool of Winterfell's godswood, Jon Snow floated. Above him white branches and red leaves blended together, the trees like ancient, unmoving portraits of blood leaving patterns on ice, and snow melting in Robb's hair. Jon felt the chill of the water seep through his leathers, cold, too cold, a cold so biting and deep it burned. Frigid without and within, Jon listened to the sounds of the woods; somewhere nearby Jon heard a wolf howling and a ghost crying for all it had never known in life... or perhaps the two were the same. _There are ghosts in Winterfell,_ Jon thought, _but only ghosts. I am alone here_... The wolf howled again.

 

The sound was more chilling than the icy water itself, and Jon squeezed his eyelids shut, concentrating hard on those things he heard farther away, his focus a wall against that which he couldn't bear. Somewhere near the edge of the forest, where he knew stone gargoyles atop dark walls kept stark company, there was children's laughter, the ring of metal on metal and someone screaming _I_ am _the Lord of Winterfell!_

 

_I am the Lord of Winterfell_ , Jon Snow thought. _I am the Lord... I... I am._

 

When the water rose and Jon sank, he did not struggle. Beneath the depths the world was dark and abstract, and Jon was left with only the memory of shifting lights, unreachable and lost. Grey shapes floated around him, vague, sinister, just within reach. The water was dark... dark and full of terrors, Jon thought, not knowing why. He realized the danger too late and thrashed frantically, no longer knowing whether the surface was to be found above or  below. _Where are you,_ he thought, imagining a warm grip on his wrist, hauling him from the waters.  

 

When his hand met something solid he did not know whether it was the bottom or the bank. He looked up and realized it was neither, that he was before a towering wall of ice. Jon stood in the snow with his hand resting against it breathing hard, eyes searching higher, higher, higher, but never finding the top. Below a construct so great, the lord of winter itself was an insignificant speck in the vast blue‑white of the ground, the sky, and the Wall... and the Lord of Winterfell even less.

 

Jon dug his fingers into the Wall, jammed a foot into an icy crack. He paused, hesitance constricting him. Wolves cannot climb. Jon looked around. There were no wolves to climb with him, only the white snow... Jon couldn't help but feel as if he were leaving something behind, yet he knew he had to reach the top of the Wall.

 

He climbed.

 

Jon's hands were stiff, and he struggled to grip the ridges along the Wall. His neck ached, his stomach and his back too, all of them screaming in protest as he dragged himself, hand over hand, ever skyward. The Wall shook, but Jon clung tightly to it, pressed against it; it felt like intimacy between lovers, warmth at a mother's breast, a brother's embrace...

 

 

AMother...@ Jon whispered to the ice, but he didn't know what the word meant or why he said it. Jon could think of nothing, just the ice beneath his fingers, scraping, biting, melting, slipping, crumbling in his grip. Only the ice of the Wall. _Ice? You know nothing, Jon Snow_ , a ghostly voice whispered in his ear. _This wall is made o ' blood..._ But Jon knew nothing, only the ice. Soon even the white snow below might have been ice along the Wall, and the ground too disappeared from Jon's mind, leaving just a memory. Jon searched the area above him, and thought he saw a final harsh slash up there, slightly darker than the sky. Yes, Jon thought, there it was, the top of the Wall.

 

When Jon was a child, he had played at heroes, and Robb had told him, Aa bastard can never be Lord of Winterfell,@ the snow melting in his hair, white on red. Robb had held Jon's hand, too, when they were little and the tracks their feet made in the snow were dwarfed by a horse's hoofprint. They had gone to the heart tree together, half buried by winter drifts, and the leaves fluttered around them, landing in the snow like drops of blood. Robb shared his bed, the two of them cuddled together for warmth, no different than the pups in the kennel who relied on their littermates to survive the winter. A brother's embrace... He closed his eyes, remembering. He saw their lord father, smiling for him with pride in his eyes... but never telling... all Jon wanted was a name...; Robb matching him stroke for stroke with wooden swords; Robb with snow melting in his hair the last time they saw each other..; Robb, little Robb being watched by the dark eyes of his brother across the hall, Robb pressing a tiny hand into Lady Catelyn's cheek; puppies curled at their mother's belly, thriving because of the protection of her heat against the cold, not each other's. He saw Robb, neck bloodied where dark twine bit through his flesh and Grey Wind's, marking them as one,  joining them in death.

 

AI am the Lord of Winterfell,@ Jon grated between clenched teeth, hauling himself up, though his arms shook with the strain. When he looked above him, the top of the Wall looked even farther away than it had before.

 

_Even a bastard can reach great heights at the Wall,_ Jon thought, _even a bastard can climb... even a bastard..._

 

Jon paused, swallowed. He didn't know if he could climb any more. He didn't know why he should want to. His skin was bitten by wind and ice, cold as a razor blade, his joints like the wall of a dam aching to collapse, muscles tight as a tourniquet, throat dry as a funeral drum. Jon looked down between his legs, and realized there was blood dripping from his body, running down the Wall to meet the dark shapes that were dragging themselves up the ice behind him; the things from the pool, dark things from his past, coming for him. Jon watched the blood, dripping from his stomach, his neck... When had he been cut? Jon struggled to remember. The waters at Winterfell... full of terrors... daggers in the dark... The Wall... The Wall.

 

Jon shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. No, no, he couldn't remember, he wouldn 't remember. Here was the Wall, he was on it, he was scaling it. Jon knew the Wall like he knew a lover, like he knew a brother's embrace, like warmth from a mother's....

 

AI am the Lord of Winterfell!@ Jon shouted down, and he dug his fingers into the ice, nails breaking as he  hoisted himself upward. Jon's hands sought cracks in the ice, niches meant for his fingers, fissures in the Wall made for Jon, made so he could conquer it. Jon breathed in cold air, relished the sting within his lungs, pulled himself, climbing, higher, higher, soaring, flying!

 

Jon didn't look down for a long time, but when he did the dark things were far below, long‑dead and long‑forgotten. Jon's blood ran down the Wall, long dark streaks that stretched to what looked like the end of all things. Jon tilted his head, thinking for a moment that he recognized the patterns, as if someone had meant to send a message... Dark against light, snow in red hair, faces in the heart tree, shapes Jon almost remembered... faces, faces.

 

_This wall is made o ' blood..._

 

He trembled, but looked away. Jon's resolve was frozen and steely within him, shatter‑proof, shatter‑proof. Jon would reach the top, he told himself,  I am the Lord of Winterfell, I will reach the top, even a bastard...

 

What was bastard? No matter what you called the Wall, blood or ice, it would always be there, always standing. But this was one wall whose precipice Jon would throw his legs over, one wall Jon would stand on top of and look down from.

 

Jon finished his ascent with eyes closed, the darkness in his vision a wall of its own, a wall to keep out the things that threatened to follow him up, things Jon did not want to bring with him. Jon's hands bled; he felt the warmth dripping down his palms, mixing with the cold, melted ice. Jon refused to look, refused to see anything but the red spots dancing against black, eyelids shut and staying that way. Better red on black, Jon thought, better than red on white, the godswood, the snow in Robb's hair, the blood that dripped... the writing on the Wall...

 

Jon's right hand, stiffer than his left, stiff from the cold, finally found the top. Jon opened his eyes, slowly, and he pulled his hand away only for a moment. He stared at the scarred palm, wondering  when the icy wall had burned it. Jon soon forgot to wonder. His feet landed on the path of ice and gravel, and he had done it. Jon had triumphed and he allowed himself to feel the thrill of victory before he looked out over the edge at the other side. Atop the Wall Jon saw for miles: Jon saw forests, still, silent, as if lying in wait for something long forgotten, the trees crowding for miles right up to the walls of Winterfell. And beyond that Jon could the flowing water that he knew was the Trident, though he 'd never been there, the great mountains of the Vale. Jon squinted, focused, and saw smaller.

 

Jon saw Robb, blood staining his teeth, eyes unseeing, saw his little sister Arya in a dark temple, a disgusting creature surrounded by men, beckoning to an ugly woman, evil eyes, evil eyes... Jon gasped, saw blood spilled against snow, staining a bronze sickle; he saw tree roots drinking deep, saw fire ravaging a land somewhere far away, men and women and children screaming as they were engulfed by flames that rose from the sea and the earth. His sight expanded so fast that eventually he was blind from overstimulation, not knowing who he was, what he was, only knowing the darkness and blood within the caverns of a man's heart, beating, beating, beating like a drum.

 

 

He could not see, but he forgot that he was supposed to... Men often were, he thought. He had been a man once. Perhaps he was one still. Or maybe he had simply been a single flake of snow. He could say neither for certain, but he knew that whatever he had been, he remained, and the only other thing he knew was darkness, but then he realized it was because his eyes were closed.

 

He opened them, and everywhere he looked there was snow, snow and ice so white as to be like nothing. Which, he thought, it may have been. He looked down, surprised to see dark blood winding down a great Wall... the red trail he 'd brought with him, the only colour in the world anymore, blood patterning the ice, snow melting in red hair...

 

AJon?@

 

Jon had forgotten voices other than his own, but somehow this one was familiar.

 

Robb... Jon turned and saw that his brother was there, staring at him with concern and love etched into his features. 

 

AHow are you here?@ Jon asked, and suddenly he remembered the blistering pain in his fingers as he ascended,  and he felt the fire he 'd seen rising from the sea burning within his chest. AHow could you be? I climbed the Wall, I did it, this is my glory, mine, my own!@ He was screaming by the time he finished, and Robb's eyes were sad, but not pitying, pleading with him.

 

AJon...@

 

AIt's my wall to climb,@ Jon whispered. AYou couldn't climb it, you could never climb the Wall, so how are you here?@

 

Jon didn't know how he 'd failed to see her before, but Lady Catelyn placed her hand on her son's shoulders, eyes boring into Jon as if asking _him,Who are you? This is not your place. Why are you here?_

 

AI belong here,@ Jon insisted, refusing to let his voice quiver, tearing his eyes from her face and looking to Robb. AI am... I am...@

 

Robb turned away from Jon, as if he couldn't bear to look at him, letting himself be folded in his mother's arms. Jon's legs gave out, the cold ice searing his knees, his bloody palms. He curled up against the ridge at the edge of the Wall, and it cradled him as he rocked back and forth, muttering to himself. The Wall surrounded him, protected him. After a fashion he wondered why he 'd thought it cold at all. Hadn 't he known the Wall all along? Wasn 't it familiar to him yes, Jon thought, intimacy with a lover, a brother's embrace... the warmth at a mother's breast.

 

AI am...@ Jon whispered, the words on the edge of his tongue, and a hand gripped his shoulder. He stood, spinning and finding himself face to face with Robb.

 

AJon? Are you alright?@ Poisoned words, Jon thought, dark and vague...

,

 

AJon, please,@ Robb continued, and reached out to grab him. AWhy do you pull back? I love you, brother. I only want to give you...@

 

Jon did not need Robb's pity, Jon did not need a mother's touch or whatever substitute Robb offered. Jon did not need a brother's embrace.

 

AI don 't need your arms around me,@ Jon hissed, and a horrible rumble began somewhere below them.

 

Robb didn't seem to notice. AJon.@

 

AI don 't need you,  and I don 't need whatever deliverance you want to give.@

 

Robb could not ignore it when a great crack split the Wall beneath their feet, and Jon saw something like fear move in his brother's eyes.

 

AI have seen the writing on the Wall,@ he went on, voice growing stronger, stretching across the vast nothingness  that surrounded them. AI don 't need anything at all from you. I am the Lord of Winterfell!@ Jon shouted, and with a cry he drew from the scabbard on his back a sword he had not known was there, swinging it wide. His reach was not enough, and he barely nicked Robb's throat. Robb lunged to the side and Jon barreled forward, gripping his brother's cloak in his fist. He yanked, bringing Robb to his knees, raising his sword high above his head. With a feral scream Jon drove the blade forward.

 

At that moment, a flash of white in Robb's hair caught his eye, melting snow against the red curls. Jon's hand stilled, his sword tip resting at Robb's chest just above his heart, drawing a single drop of blood. His brother's wide blue eyes bore into his face, frightened and betrayed.

 

ARobb...@ Jon breathed as the cracks in the Wall raced toward them. Shame stole through him, uncomfortable and cold.

 

AFarewell, Snow,@ Robb said, and the Wall broke. Jon fell, ice racing past him on all sides as he went deeper and deeper into the Wall. Jon was unconscious before he hit the ground, but the landing did not kill him.

 

When he awoke he was in a room with walls of icy stone. His hands gripped his sword like claws, crossed over his chest. The sword burned in his grip, but didn't melt the layer of ice that had frozen across the black clothing of the Night's Watch he wore. An ice cell, Jon thought, somewhere in one of the few not buried by snow, somewhere to dump his body... The walls of this cell weren 't ice, Jon thought, reaching up to touch the torn flesh of his neck, and then down to feel the hole in his gut from Bowen Marsh's knife, finding it mostly healed now, though Jon had no idea how long he 'd been there.

 

_This wall is made o' blood._

 

Nor had it drunk its fill yet, and Jon would not give in without a fight.


End file.
